participatory design

Longevicity: Crossing Communities – Milan|Tokyo

Francesco Zurlo

There is a subtle red thread that connects these portraits to the theme explored in the Longevicity project.

The Longevicity project is an ode to respect. Specifically, it is a respect for the senior citizens. And therefore, also an ode to the diversity of those who have other skills due to the test of time. But it is also a reflection on the idea of ​​care. An idea of ​​care with its own spatial dimension: the neighborhood and, by extension, the city. And then an actor dimension: the care workers, all of us are agents involved in collaborative processes to activate communities.

The portrait, which is at the center of this exhibition, is perhaps the highest expression of care. They are not just any arbitrary portraits because they represent senior people.

As in Renaissance portraiture, those made by great painters such as Piero della Francesca or Leonardo, the goal is to represent the subject's soul. It means placing oneself in a condition of listening and understanding what the facets of the identity are. In fact, identity is a transparent dimension for oneself. The others can grasp those dimensions - of the soul and the life that has been lived - that are significant and distinctive. With all incredibly beautiful experiences, the bruises of time are there in front of us, captured from the outside with an attentive and penetrating gaze. Made with care.

In the Greek theatre, people were masks, an artifice to tell a different story from time to time, in tragedies as in comedies. And the portrait captures one of the possible masks of our existence, giving it values. I believe it is the perfect realization of being a person, according to the reflections of Martha Nussbaum. Being a person, for the American philosopher, means being able to best express some essential skills. Many of them coincide with elementary rights, such as access to education, expression of one's ideas, and gender equality. Other principles, which nurture just as many capacities, are in tune with many of the research contents that supported this exhibition: for example, feeling capable of exploring one's own - urban - life context without being afraid of being able to run into uncomfortable or unpleasant situations. Or the ability to express oneself in union and relationship with others as an essential element (and for seniors even more so) of being alive, expressing a feeling of belonging and the offer/request for care. And then some aspects concern some central capacities that are absolutely relevant for those involved in project culture. I would like to highlight two of them.

On the one hand, the ability and conditions that favor this ability – to imagine. Human beings need to tell stories and imagine the situations they live in and in which they find the meanings of their existence. It is a fertile imagination that feeds on the relationship. These photos open up to reverie processes by imagining actors at the center of the stage for a moment. And then the idea of play. Play as a way of exploring the world and relating to it, to things, and nature. Play as a healing activity. This playfulness seems to emerge from the smiles and eyes, sometimes embarrassed, of the subjects portrayed by Laura Liverani.